Just two months from January 1, 2011, the date set by CMS for 5010 Level 1 compliance, only a small percentage of companies will be ready to hit the ground running when the New Year strikes and it is likely that many companies won’t begin testing until the second half of 2011.
“Based on our survey, not many providers will be ready to begin testing in a robust way until the second or third quarter,” said Joe Miller, director, E-business for Philadelphia-based Amerihealth Mercy, and immediate past chair, HIMSS Financial Systems Steering Committee. “That creates challenges because CMS did a good job planning this out saying we needed a year to test. Now that window is going be a lot tighter.”
The lagging effort is not confined solely to providers though. While other industry sectors may have more companies farther down the road to testing payers, clearinghouses and vendors also have stragglers.
At clearinghouse Gateway EDI, which company officials said will be ready to begin testing on January 1, open and frequent communication between trading partners is one key to helping get more companies up to speed.
“We have really started to push out information about our readiness and our plans and giving FAQs to our providers about what they should be thinking about,” said Jackie Griffin, manager of payer relations and project implementation. This effort is paying off, she said, as questions from providers about what Gateway is doing and how they may be able to help providers have steadily increased in the past few months.
Miller agreed that education is important right now, especially since there is not a lot of agreement about how or what to test. “Health plan by health plan, clearinghouse by clearinghouse, there needs to be adequate information provided to the provider community about how you can test with me,” he said.
If getting out enough information to providers is one of the major roadblocks, Miller said he would like to see some kind of formalized, broad-based educational program launched that would give providers some practical how-to steps, as well as forge better consensus among all stakeholders about the testing process.
“An education program should talk about the basics of 5010 and what you need to do before you even think about testing,” said Miller. “This would get a common message out there in the community and provide some real focus.”